Description
The authors present high-resolution pollen data from an 1100-year sediment core taken from Crescent Island Crater Lake (0.75°S, 36.37°E), a subbasin of Lake Naivasha, in the central Rift Valley of Kenya, which served as a proxy record of changes in the balance between regional precipitation and evaporation. The Medieval Warm Period (~ AD 900-1200) was identified as a prolonged period of drought in which the surrounding forest contracted and the lake level dropped. Furthermore, from the authors' Figure 3 it can be seen that the MWP drought was of greater magnitude and duration than recent 20th century drought.